The 20-year study showed that socially competent children who could cooperate with their peers without prompting, be helpful to others, understand their feelings, and resolve problems on their own, were far more likely to earn a college degree and have a full-time job by age 25 than those with limited social skills.

Those with limited social skills also had a higher chance of getting arrested, binge-drinking, and applying for public housing.

"From an early age, these skills can determine whether a child goes to college or prison, and whether they end up employed or addicted."

If your parents divorce when you're super-young, you'll likely have poor relationships with them in adulthood.

Flickr/Jackie

If your parents split up when you were between 3 and 5, you'll probably have an insecure relationship with them when you're an adult, especially in the case of fathers, according to a University of Illinois study. However, that divorce incidence doesn't predict insecure romantic relationships.

If you copycat your parents, you'll be more open-minded as an adult.

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If you copied everything your parents did as a child, even if it didn't make sense, it's likely you developed a willingness to assume that actions have some "unknown" purpose. This will make you more open to sharing and transmitting culture later on in life, according to a study by researchers at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and the University of Queensland in Australia.

If you're a girl and your mom works, you're more likely to become the boss and make more money.

The study found daughters of working mothers went to school longer, were more likely to have a job in a supervisory role, and earned more money — 23% more compared to their peers who were raised by stay-at-home mothers.

The sons of working mothers also tended to pitch in more on household chores and childcare, the study found — they spent seven and a half more hours a week on childcare and 25 more minutes on housework.

"Role modeling is a way of signaling what's appropriate in terms of how you behave, what you do, the activities you engage in, and what you believe," the study's lead author, Harvard Business School professor Kathleen L. McGinn, told Business Insider.

"There are very few things, that we know of, that have such a clear effect on gender inequality as being raised by a working mother," she told Working Knowledge.

If you're sexually abused as a child, you're at higher risk of being obese as an adult.

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Several studies have shown a correlation between sexual abuse — and other traumatic childhood experiences — and eating disorders.

For women, a 2007 study showed that childhood sexual abuse raised the risk of obesity by 27% compared with women who were never sexually abused.

For men, a 2009 study showed that experiencing sexual abuse as a child raised the risk of obesity by 66% compared with males who never experienced sexual abuse.

Trying to be 'cool' in high school could lead to problems in adulthood.

Flickr/Kristoffer Trolle

Teens who try to act older than their age to gain popularity and engage in "adolescent pseudomature behavior" are more likely to have problems with drugs and alcohol and engage in serious criminal behavior by their early 20s, according to a study published in the journal Child Development.

Adolescent pseudomature behavior describes young teens who want to look and feel mature before they actually are — they haven't reached the emotional and behavioral maturity that comes with adulthood. To look and feel mature, these teens often behave in ways they consider mature, like drinking alcohol, smoking, partying late, and having sex.

"It appears that while so-called cool teens' behavior might have been linked to early popularity, over time, these teens needed more and more extreme behaviors to try to appear cool," Joseph P. Allen, lead author and professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, said.

As "Drive" author Dan Pink has noted, the higher the income for the parents, the higher the SAT scores for the kids.

"Absent comprehensive and expensive interventions, socioeconomic status is what drives much of educational attainment and performance," he wrote.

If you grow up poor, your working memory could suffer.

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People who grow up in lower socioeconomic classes end up with a lower working memory — or ability to hold multiple objects in their minds — in adulthood, suggests a University of Oregon study.

If you watch lots of violent TV, you're more likely to be an aggressive grown-up.

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According to a 15-year study, children model their behaviors after violent scenes where the perpetrators are rewarded for violence. For example, if a child watches a detective who's rewarded for bringing a murderer to justice after a violent clash, it will result in more pushing, grabbing, and shoving from the child — even after he or she has grown up.

Learning math early on makes you better at math and reading down the road.

Flickr/tracy the astonishing

A 2007 meta-analysis of 35,000 preschoolers across the US, Canada, and England found that developing math skills early can turn into a huge advantage.

"The paramount importance of early math skills — of beginning school with a knowledge of numbers, number order, and other rudimentary math concepts — is one of the puzzles coming out of the study," coauthor and Northwestern University researcher Greg Duncansaid in a press release. "Mastery of early math skills predicts not only future math achievement, it also predicts future reading achievement."

If you have druggy parents, you'll likely be a super-serious adult.

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If you grew up witnessing your parents abusing drugs or alcohol, you probably ended up being the parent to your parents.

Because you skipped childhood altogether, you become super-serious and won't know how to have fun as an adult. You also tend to be overly responsible, says Portland Lifestyle Counseling.

When your mom finishes college, you're more likely to do the same.

Merrimack College/Flickr

A 2014 study lead by University of Michigan psychologist Sandra Tang found that mothers who finished high school or college were more likely to raise kids that did the same.

Pulling from a group of over 14,000 children who entered kindergarten in 1998 to 2007, the study found that children born to teen moms (18 years old or younger) were less likely to finish high school or go to college than their counterparts.

Aspiration is at least partially responsible. In a 2009 longitudinal study of 856 people in semirural New York, Bowling Green State University psychologist Eric Dubow found that "parents' educational level when the child was 8 years old significantly predicted educational and occupational success for the child 40 years later."

If you were bullied as a kid, you're more likely to face hardships an adult.

Thomas Ricker/Flickr

A study that tracked 7,771 British children from when they were 7 to 50 years old found that people who were bullied as kids had worse relationships, increased depression, higher anxiety, lower educational attainment, and lower earnings.

In a study published recently in the JAMA Psychiatry journal, researchers at Duke University found that victims of bullying in childhood were at increased risk of anxiety disorders in adulthood, and those who were both victims and perpetrators were at increased risk of adult depression and panic disorder. Female bullies/victims were at higher risk for developing agoraphobia, while male bullies/victims were at increased risk for suicidality.

If you're allowed to watch TV as a baby, you may have suppressed communication skills.

After observing mothers and children in a study, researchers found that TV reduces parent-child communication. Even when there was speaking involved, the parents' comments were typically unrelated to what their children said.

The result is that it created an "unproductive exchange that could hinder children's opportunity for learning," the authors said.

A less-stressed parent helps you keep your cool.

Flickr/Oleg Sidorenko

According to new research cited by Brigid Schulte at The Washington Post, the number of hours that moms spend with kids between ages 3 and 11 does little to predict the child's behavior, well-being, or achievement.

"Mothers' stress, especially when mothers are stressed because of the juggling with work and trying to find time with kids, that may actually be affecting their kids poorly," study coauthor and Bowling Green State University sociologist Kei Nomaguchi told The Post.

Emotional contagion — or the psychological phenomenon where people "catch" feelings from one another like they would a cold — helps explain why. The research shows that if your friend is happy, that brightness will infect you; if she's sad, that gloominess will transfer as well. So if a parent is exhausted or frustrated, that emotional state could transfer to the kids.

If you're spanked as a child, you may be a sneaky adult.

Flickr via ignas_kukenys

In the book "Drive," author Daniel Pink explains that trying to influence a child's behavior by offering rewards or punishment does not result in the desired behavior. Instead, children will only work harder to avoid getting caught the next time.

The conclusion is, if you were spanked often as a child, you'll most likely resort to misbehaving even more, but you'll learn how to do it without getting caught.

If you're abused as a child, your memory and emotional control could suffer as an adult.

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

Neuroscientific research shows that people who experienced childhood abuse have worse memories and less control over their emotions.

According to a study out of Harvard, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, being sexually or emotionally abused as a child can stunt the development of three key areas of the hippocampus that control memory and the regulation of emotion.

Children who have good self-control early on are more likely to be well-functioning adults.

"Parents should forget about their children's self-esteem and concentrate in instilling self-control," self-control expert Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University in Tallahassee, told WebMD.

When your parents pay attention to you, you have healthier relationships and greater academic success in your 30s.

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A 2014 study of 243 people born into poverty found that children who received "sensitive caregiving" in their first three years not only did better in academic tests in childhood, but had healthier relationships and greater academic attainment in their 30s.

As reported on PsyBlog, parents who are sensitive caregivers "respond to their child's signals promptly and appropriately" and "provide a secure base" for children to explore the world.

When mothers take maternity leave their children are more likely to be successful as adults.

Fiona Goodall / Stringer

Research out of The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn indicates higher education, IQ, and income levels in adulthood for children of mothers who used maternity leave — the biggest effect comes for children from lower-educated households. The researchers cited this as a significant discussion for US policymakers to have, as paid maternity leave could reduce the existing gap in education and income in the US.

If you're close with your dad as a child, you're more likely to develop better interpersonal relationships down the road.

A "fixed mindset" assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens that we can't change in any meaningful way, and success is the affirmation of that inherent intelligence, an assessment of how those givens measure up against an equally fixed standard; striving for success and avoiding failure at all costs become a way of maintaining the sense of being smart or skilled.

A "growth mindset," on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of un-intelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities.

At the core is a distinction in the way you assume your will affects your ability, and it has a powerful effect on kids. If kids are told that they aced a test because of their innate intelligence, that creates a "fixed" mindset. If they succeeded because of effort, that teaches a "growth" mindset.